Metro

Mike advises Bam: get better people

He insists he’s not running for president, but that doesn’t preclude Mayor Bloomberg from having strong ideas about President Obama’s performance, including rapping him for lacking strong business advisers and going wishy-washy on the controversial Ground Zero mosque.

“One of the things I’ve urged the president to do is to get some business people in his close, tight circle,” the mayor said, expanding on an interview in GQ magazine in which he urged Obama to recruit “better advisers.”

“One of the president’s jobs is to promote American business around the world, sell our products, get people from around the world to come and invest here. That’s a big part of the job. That’s our tax base. That’s how Americans earn a living, and I don’t think he has enough [business] advisers,” Bloomberg said.

The mayor went on to say that the Obama advisers he knows personally — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Treasury chief Tim Geithner and Education Secretary Arne Duncan — are all top notch. He also said White House political adviser David Axelrod and former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel are “very smart.”

But Obama has a strained relationship with the business community — the exact opposite of Bloomberg, a billionaire entrepreneur who’s viewed by many business leaders as one of their own.

In the interview with GQ — which named Bloomberg the “most interesting and most fearless politician in America” — the mayor suggested that Obama was paying too much attention to political people and that he’d be better off sticking to his beliefs and ignoring the polls.

“The president, I think, needs some better advisers,” the mayor told GQ. “He campaigns, ‘I’m gonna do A,’ and then he doesn’t do it. Now he’s pissed off the supporters and the opponents. You go for it.”

Especially gnawing to the mayor, it seemed, was Obama’s backtracking on the Ground Zero mosque.

“If you’re going to stand up for the mosque Friday night, you don’t walk away from it Saturday morning,” Bloomberg said.

Obama spoke forcefully to a group of American Muslims in August about the right of developers to build a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site but later qualified his remarks by explaining that he wasn’t taking sides and was merely speaking of the right of everyone to be treated equally under the law.

Bloomberg has consistently defended the mosque, despite overwhelming public opposition.

His spokesman, Stu Loeser, said the mayor’s remarks were intended to help Obama.

“The mayor has always argued — including in this interview — that we all need to band together behind the president to help him succeed, and these comments were made in that spirit,” Loeser said.

david.seifman@nypost.com